5 Minutes with Indiana's Andy Bayer

Previewing this week's NCAA indoor championships

This is the first in a series of articles this week previewing the March 11-12 NCAA indoor track and field championships. Check back later in the week at runningtimes.com/college for more articles.

Andy Bayer, 21, of Leo-Cedarville, Indiana, is a third-year sophomore at Indiana University in Bloomington. In high school, Bayer notched school records in the 1,600m (4:12), 3,200m (9:02), and 5,000m (15:44), and was the 3,200m state titleholder in 2008. At IU, Bayer is finishing his third season as a Hoosier where he leads a deep distance corps of men, four of which are sub-14:00 performers in the 5,000m. He holds a 3:57.75 PB (No. 6 in the NCAA this winter) in the mile and 7:48.35 in the 3,000m (No. 1 in the NCAA this winter). He was the 2011 Big Ten Indoor Champion in the 3,000m and last year finished third in that event in the NCAA indoor championships. We caught up with him as he was starting to focus on the March 11-12 NCAA indoor championships in College Station, Texas.

RT: So, looking back, why did you choose Indiana?

Andy Bayer: “I went on visits to Indiana, Purdue and Loyola, and I felt like I fit in best here, and in terms of coaching, Coach Helmer [head coach and director at Indiana] had the best credentials. As a team, Indiana seemed to show the most potential of the schools. It was kind of a mix between team and coaching.”

RT: Maybe he had potential, but Coach Helmer had only been at Indiana a year and hadn’t done much yet. It was a young team and you’d be part of something from the ground up. What was it about Coach Helmer that made you head to Indiana?

AB: “I liked that he was very blunt about things. Coming out of high school, I didn’t have the best PRs. He told me they wanted me to come and that I could definitely help out but he couldn’t guarantee anything. He works with guys like me a lot. If I was willing to put in the work, it would work out well. Things like that drew me in.”

RT: What did you think about your own potential when you were approaching the university level?

AB: “The way I felt, I was just coming on at the end of high school and I had a lot of room to grow. That’s why I wanted to go to a program that was a little bit bigger. There were seven pretty good guys from Indiana in the recruiting class ahead of me that were freshmen while I was visiting. I knew the team was deep and that they’d all push me pretty hard because a lot of them had done a lot more than I had in high school in terms of accolades.”

RT: Obviously over the last three years there’s been a lot of hard work on your part to get where you’re at now, but what aspects has Coach Helmer and the team had on your progress?

AB: “I would attribute mostly all of it to those two things. Part of it is work ethic, but it helps to have a strong team. [Coach Helmer] knows how much we’re going to push each other and he sets up workouts to make sure we know when it’s appropriate to lay it out on the track and when it’s appropriate to hold back. There’s a good solid group of guys all training really well together. There’s at least four or five of us in a solid training group, plus another eight or ten right behind us.

“We all have the same ideas for what we want our team to be in terms of a championship-type team that’s good all the way from sprints to distance. Coach Helmer has done a good job of recruiting guys that are willing to sacrifice some of their benefits for the team. It makes a good atmosphere.”

RT: Coach Helmer was recently quoted saying he was developing competitors and not just guys who could run fast. Could you talk about how that has helped your development?

AB: “One important thing is we race a lot throughout the year. We’re not the type of team that races once or twice at a Washington or Notre Dame last chance-type meet where guys just go out on the track and run fast.

“We race a lot of weekends throughout the indoor and outdoor season where we’ll double or do race and pace, or do multiple things throughout a weekend to build your confidence level racing to get used to being uncomfortable in race situations. He’ll throw you in events that maybe you won’t run in championship season — I’ll run an 800m because I’m not comfortable running an 800. It gets me used to situations where you don’t necessarily know what’s coming at you, which is kind of how championship season is. We are practicing racing every weekend even if it is set up or it is against competition that isn’t as good. We at least get the atmosphere and we get used to the nerves and we get used to guys that are going to throw anything at us.”

RT: You’re redshirting the 2011 outdoor track season. How did that decision came about?

AB: “The main reason was last year I had a good cross [country] season and a good indoor season, then started breaking down outdoors. I got hurt right at the end [of outdoors] and then I missed eight or nine weeks this summer, so I lost some base. The plan is to redshirt so that I can build strength and not have to worry about breaking down. Maybe we’ll try and race the U.S. championships, but we want to make sure we aren’t losing any training like we did last year. The goal is to build as much strength as possible outdoor so then coming it to next year I’ll have a really strong base so that I make it through all three seasons healthy and strong.”